How Job Board Friendly Is Your CV?

Job boards. Whether you love or hate them they're here to stay and are considered by many to be a vital tool for the modern job seeker. With most job boards you can browse a job vacancy database, which will have hundreds, maybe thousands of job vacancies, apply search filters to make sure that you only see the job vacancies that are right for you; then in many cases you have the option of storing your CV online in a CV database. Job board CV databases are accessed by employers and recruitment agencies when they are looking for job seekers to fill a particular job role. The question you need to ask yourself is: is your CV easy to find? More importantly, is it easy to find by those you want to find it?

Some advice you may find useful

CV databases work along the same lines as search engines like Google and Yahoo; you search for keywords and it returns CVs containing those keywords, often filtering by context and frequency of those words.

So what should you do to make sure that your CV does not fall into a digital black hole? Here are my top 3 tips for making sure your CV is easy to find online:

1) When you are composing you CV ask yourself this question: ‘What job do I want to get?’ With this in mind write down as many words or phrases that you would associate with that job and then ensure you incorporate those phrases or key words into your CV. If a CV contains all the words that an employer or recruiter is likely to search for, then you are more likely to be found in their searches.

2) Always keep things simple. Don’t over complicate your job title or the way you phrase your experience as people will not search for long winded terms.

3) Put a synonyms box at the bottom of your CV text and include a list of alternative job titles. Different organisations use different names for the same job role, so having a list of these in your CV will mean it will be visible to a wider range of recruiters.

I hope you find this information useful and that it helps you in your job search.